Storage industry?
kbowen0188
Member Posts: 87 ■■□□□□□□□□
Through my studies of CCENT and Linux, I have always had an interest in Storage and Cloud technologies. My most respected mentor has always worked for Netapp and has taught me a few things here and there, which is probably what has led to my interest in the field.
A networking certification seems to set a good foundation for just about any career in IT, but I was trying to figure out a good next step after that. I have been employed as a Help Desk Specialist and a Field Tech for about three years now, so I was looking to start educating myself on storage.
However, when I check out job postings, I am having a hard time finding certifications that are requested for these sorts of things. I have never heard mention of Storage+, though I do hear mention of the technologies that I assume would be involved in such a certification (SAN, NAS, RAID, etc). Has anyone ever tried to break into this industry or know of certifications that would be worth snagging?
A networking certification seems to set a good foundation for just about any career in IT, but I was trying to figure out a good next step after that. I have been employed as a Help Desk Specialist and a Field Tech for about three years now, so I was looking to start educating myself on storage.
However, when I check out job postings, I am having a hard time finding certifications that are requested for these sorts of things. I have never heard mention of Storage+, though I do hear mention of the technologies that I assume would be involved in such a certification (SAN, NAS, RAID, etc). Has anyone ever tried to break into this industry or know of certifications that would be worth snagging?
Comments
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Asif Dasl
Member Posts: 2,116 ■■■■■■■■□□
There is EMC & NetApp certifications but I've only seen them as part of job postings for other things like VMware. That might just be where I am though. Getting in to a storage only job, I think is probably one of the hardest IT fields to get in to.
Where I am there is very few storage only job postings and most of them are looking for extensive experience before allowing you to touch their infrastructure (rightly so)- but it pays very well. It was something I considered for a little while but I think I will stick to VMware.
I haven't seen any job postings look for Storage+ but if you wanted to read up on it more I would recommend 2 books:
EMC Information Storage and Management
Cisco Storage Networking Fundamentals
I'd be interested in hearing from others in the storage field myself... -
kbowen0188
Member Posts: 87 ■■□□□□□□□□
There are some free training materials for both EMC and NetApp that I have found on their websites, but most of their training requires you to be either a partner or an employee, neither of which I am. I have gotten the same impression as you, that it is hard to break into, and have considered going a Sys Admin route beforehand. There is also the Help Desk at a place like Netapp and EMC, but so far I haven't had much luck breaking into those, as they like a certain amount of experience as well.